Every once in a while, a title comes along and really surprises you...really makes you want to play it start to finish. Golf Story on the Nintendo Switch somehow became one of those games. Golf Story is a golf/RPG hybrid game done in a pixel art style, but that barely starts to describe the adventure you are about to go on.

Summer is a great time to get outside and play some sports. It's also a good time to stay inside and play some sports video games instead. For the past two years, I've taken the Summer as a queue to take a look at the landscape of sports games available on PC. In fact, I'm now going to call it a tradition around here. As a note, these outlines are not meant to be a thorough list of all sports games released in the year, but rather more of a guide to let you know about the best current options you can play for each sport. I've also intentionally left out the management sims like Out Of The Park Baseball, as those are really their own sort of sub-sub-genre. The 2016 edition of our survey actually has some pretty interesting entries that weren't around last year. But don't get your hopes up... there's still no Madden, and hockey and volleyball games are still nowhere to be found.

Well, any classic Nintendo NES fan will know that, like other consoles, the NES has its own number of sports games, such as Slalom, and 10 - Yard Fight by Nintendo. There are even games from third parties such as Tecmo's Tecmo Bowl and Super Bowl. One in particular, Ice Hockey, is the one that I will be reviewing here. Starting off, you will notice the cartridge and box art are different than most Nintendo sports titles. Most come in the black boxes that we've all seen at one time or another. Strangely, Ice Hockey comes in a bright blue box with a picture of some random ice hockey player. This is the only Nintendo sports title that hasn't had the cartoony style characters on the box and cart.

Now, as you first boot up the game, you are treated to some quite cheerful music and some small hockey players on the screen. Like most NES games, Ice Hockey has the option of either 1 or 2 players. As you press start on the controller, you get a screen of several options. On this screen, you get to choose your team (USA, Canada, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, and Poland), your opponent's team, the speed of the game, and the length of the game, ranging from 7, 10, and 15 minutes. The last thing that you will set up before the game begins, is the setup of your team. You choose which type of players will be on your team. Once all of the options are selected, the match can begin.

As the game begins, you will start out at center ice to battle for the puck. The gameplay mostly relies on being able to pass the puck, shoot, and how you selected your team. From the get-go, none of the teams have a statistical advantage over the others. Before the game, each team has five players (a stocky player, 2 average players, and a skinny player). The stocky players are the best at shooting and bowling over other players (which is pretty entertaining), the average players are average all around, and finally, the skinny ones are the fastest but tend to be the ones that get bowled over the most often. Also, each team has a goaltender as well. The controller only controls the player that is selected, but it will also control the goaltender no matter which one is selected. Fights can also ensue, and will continue until the ref stops it and sends the starter to the penalty box. Goals can be kind of hard to achieve at times, but when you do score one, it is damn satisfying! One other thing to note is that, when the game is paused, the pause sound is the same pause sound from Super Mario Bros.!

As you can see, this is one of the greatest sports titles to be released on the NES, and is personally one of my favorite nes games of all time. I'll give this game a 9/10

Ahh yeah baby feels good to be back in style with features that aren't crapily thrown together. This time, they are actually somewhat decent and will keep me from losing my position as a features writer. So all you people out there who hate me and my sarcasm and jackass attitude, hi.

Moving on, it's Mario sports week! Ahh yeah baby. Perhaps the most fun sports games of all are the Mario sports games, so why not celebrate in style by throwing a fiesta! Go round up some illegal immigrants and have them party with you! Have them play some Mario Tennis with you or maybe even make a Mario pinata and break it with them! Ahh yeah this is going to be one hell of a week if you do that.

Ehh hem, moving on seriously, I hate getting down to the business and doing what I'm actually supposed to be doing, the featured game is Mario Hoops 3 on 3. I like it, in fact I liked it enough to include decimals in the damn score. Any collaboration with Square Enix and Nintendo is good in my book, except like some crappy game where Peach gets captured and you play as Cloud Strife to stop whoever the final boss is in any Dragon Quest game with Cloud bitching the entire freaking game. That would probably suck. Anyway, the featured image is Mario Golf for the N64. I love that game. If you don't, you aren't American, and if you aren't American, then hi. Next the featured hardware is the wii remote, or the wiimote. Anyway it puts an interesting spin on Mario Soccer. Finally the featured collection is Magewout's because he won the 'Shimra randomly selects a user to be featured' contest. Congrats bud, congrats.